One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest Feminist Analysis

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The female characters in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest can be divided into two extreme categories: "ball-cutters" and whores. The former is represented by Nurse Ratched, Harding's wife, Billy Bibbit's mother, and Chief Bromden's mother. Each of these women are intent on dominating men by emasculating them, whereas the whores Candy and Sandy are dedicated to pleasuring men and doing what they're told. Despite the obvious nature of this observation, Kesey aims higher than asserting male dominance over female acquiescence. His goal is to assert those qualities identified as feminine to undermine those qualities considered masculine. In between the two female extremes of ball-cutter and whore is the Asian-American nurse in the Disturbed Ward who bandages McMurphy. She represents an ideal middle ground — a compassionate, intelligent, nurturing woman who is nevertheless powerless to save McMurphy. McMurphy flirts with her after she relates Ratched's history to him. She doesn't succumb to his advances, presumably to display that Kesey realizes that women are more than sexual playthings. Her presence in the novel is short-lived, however, and McMurphy is quickly returned to the machinations of Nurse Ratched. "We are victims of a matriarchy here,"…show more content…
The war isn't between the sexes, but an archetypal battle between the more positive masculine qualities and the more negative feminine qualities. This motif suits his purpose because it allows Kesey to express a worldview of good against evil in which one of the cardinal virtues of McMurphy's world is masculinity. It is the masculine virtue that engenders nature, spontaneity, sexual freedom, and rebellion against the feminine qualities of societal repression under the guise of

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